


Practical Demonstrations

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Strange Tides [2]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 11:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9437546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams, he can face any situation, no matter the odds of victory or survival, but facing his own feelings takes a different kind of bravery."Steve offers Danny some practical demonstrations - of his tail, and his feelings.





	

_But you seem like a nice guy, and we're cool with it._  
  
Steve had done a thousand insane, brave, heroic, borderline suicidal things in his time, a whole lot of them in the name of family, friends, and country. A significant number of them for love, too.  
  
But there were some things he was too afraid to do, even for love.  
  
Especially for love.  
  
He'd about had a panic attack when he'd woken up that morning and realized he was in love with Danny. His alarm went off, he opened his eyes, and that was his first thought.  
  
Danny.  
  
_When you woke up, I asked you your name, and you said Danny._  
  
Danny was his first thought every morning and his last thought every night.  
  
Steve was in love with Danny. It scared the hell out of him. He was more than willing to admit to himself that he was attracted to Danny, because Danny was fine-looking - strong jaw, bright eyes, pretty mouth, broad shoulders. Plenty of people were attracted to Danny, and Steve saw no shame in counting himself one of their number.  
  
And okay, maybe he had a bit of a ridiculous crush on Danny. The things he told Danny he found irritating, like his tendency to talk too much and over-think things and wave his hands around when he talked? He actually found those endearing and, on really pathetic days, cute.  
  
But that wasn't the same as being in love.  
  
Steve woke up that morning, and his first thought was of Danny, and his second thought was, _I should tell him about my tail,_ and his third thought was, _Hell no, he'd lose his mind,_  and his fourth thought was of the two women who'd rescued him after he escaped from the Benedetti gang in Trenton, and how they were okay with what he was.  
  
Steve had spent the rest of the day quietly freaking out, even as he directed a homicide investigation, talked to witnesses, talked Jerry down out of another conspiracy theory tree, fielded phone calls from Mary about what to do for Joanie's birthday, dropped Grace off at Step-Stan's.  
  
He was in love with Danny, and he wanted to tell Danny everything about him. He'd never told anyone else about this part of him, not Catherine, not Mary, not Dad, not even Joe White.  
  
Steve had never figured out why his mother insisted on not telling Dad and Mary about the Sea People, but there had been something in the urgency of her voice, in the shadows of her eyes, when she warned him to never, ever tell anyone about it, that had always stopped him from saying the words aloud.  
  
_When I'm in the water, I can grown gills and a fish tail and swim underwater for forever._  
  
(He wasn't sure it was actually forever, but he'd once gone three whole hours without surfacing and hadn't felt any the worse for wear.)  
  
Steve couldn't sleep that night, lay in bed staring at the ceiling, and wondered. Dare he tell Danny how he felt, let alone about being Sea People?  
  
The decision about the fact of the Sea People was taken from him, two weeks later, when they were kidnapped by some angry stragglers from the Benedetti Family, who offered Steve a choice - let himself drown, or let Danny drown. He told them to put him in the water, and he heard Danny screaming his name as they pushed him into the tank massive and started to seal the lid shut. He could see Danny through the glass, struggling against his captors.  
  
He held his breath as long as he could, which was longer than most humans, even the well-trained ones, like the pearl divers. But body wouldn't let him go without oxygen for too long, and when he felt the shakes start, he started to squirm out of his clothes, much to the puzzlement of Danny and the gangsters outside the tank. He managed to get his underwear off right before the change hit.  
  
And then there was panic and confusion, and Danny took advantage of the gangsters' shock to overpower one of them, take his gun, and lay waste to the rest.  
  
Then he opened the tank, and Steve took a gulp of fresh air, reversed the change, and climbed out. Brought his soaking clothes with him and wrung them out as best as he could before he pulled them back on, never meeting Danny's gaze. He'd just pulled on his shirt when Kono, Chin, and Lou burst into the warehouse, guns at the ready.

Two days later, Danny invited himself over, sat down on Steve’s couch, and said he had questions. Steve did his best to answer them. As he talked, he realized how little he really knew about himself. He knew the basics about his abilities - swimming, gills, holding breath, seeing and hearing underwater - but not whether his genetics were the reason he was rarely sick, the reason he was strong and fast, healed faster than seemed normal. And he knew nothing about the Sea People themselves, where they were from, how to find them. All he knew was what his mother had told him, and even then it wasn’t much.  
  
After Steve answered every question Danny could think of and volunteered some extra information besides, Danny said nothing, stared at his hands.  
  
Finally he said, “Anything else you think I should know about?”  
  
This was it. This was the moment. All the cards on the table. Steve said, “I’m in love with you.”  
  
Danny blinked. “Wait, what?”  
  
Steve said it again. “I’m in love with you.”  
  
“You - what? I meant - any more superpowers or whatever, that I should know about. Not that turning into one of Gracie’s favorite mythical creatures really counts as a superpower, but -” Danny’s jaw worked. “You’re in love with me? Since when?”  
  
Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. “A while, I guess. Took me a while to figure out what I feel.”  
  
“Oh. So on top of being a fish man -”  
  
“- Sea People.”  
  
“You’re in love with me.” Danny was on his feet and pacing in an instant, wearing his usual groove in front of Steve’s couch. “What am I supposed to do with that?”  
  
“Whatever you want with it,” Steve said. “I didn’t tell you because I expected you to say it back. I just figured - well, you know about my tail, you might as well know everything.”  
  
Danny spun to stare at him. “You think you can just drop that kind of bomb on me and we can go on just being friends?”  
  
“We’ve been friends for several years now.”  
  
Danny’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “You mean you’ve been in love with me for years? And you never told me?”  
  
“I’ve been Sea People a whole lot longer,” Steve muttered.  
  
“How am I supposed to act, knowing how you feel about me?”  
  
Steve rolled his eyes. “Like you always have been. Nothing has to change if you don’t want it to.”  
  
“But all these years I’ve been dating women and -”  
  
“I hadn’t noticed,” Steve said dryly.  
  
Danny threw his hands up. “Steven, how could you do this to me? Just lay it on me like that?”  
  
“You asked if there was anything else I thought you should know, and I thought you should know that. In the interest of full disclosure. I wasn’t trying to _do_ anything to you.” Steve stood up. “Now, I was going to offer to head down to the shore and give you a more practical demonstration of what it means to be Sea People, but I think you need some time alone to process.”  
  
“I’ve already had a practical demonstration about you being Ariel,” Danny said. “What do you mean, in love with me?”  
  
“I mean you’re the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing I think about at night, and every day you make me smile, make me happy, and I would die for you in a heartbeat.” Steve shrugged. He was damn pleased with himself and the way he was handling this. Very calm, very rational. A SEAL was always cool under pressure.  
  
Danny narrowed his eyes. “Since when are you all sappy and romantic?”  
  
“Since you, apparently.”  
  
Danny groaned and buried his face in his hands. “You make me crazy, do you know that?”  
  
“You make me crazy too, so I guess we’re even.”  
  
Danny peeked through his fingers at Steve. “A practical demonstration, you said?”  
  
Steve nodded. “Yeah. Want to head down to the shore?” He tugged off his shirt. He’d been wearing boardies because he’d planned on going out and having a swim that afternoon anyway. “C’mon. Let’s go.” He turned and headed for the door.  
  
Danny’s hand on his wrist made him pause.  
  
Steve turned to look at him. “Danny?”  
  
Danny stepped closer, placed his hand tentatively on Steve’s chest, over his heart. Steve’s pulse skyrocketed. “Steve.”  
  
“Glad we know each other’s names.”  
  
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Danny said. He leaned up on his toes and closed his eyes.  
  
Steve leaned down to him, and when their lips met, his eyes fell shut, and Steve was pretty sure this was the bravest he’d ever been.


End file.
